These days, 20something marriage has gotten a reputation for being a bad idea. That’s partly because parents, peers, and the popular culture encourage young adults to treat their twenties as a decade for exploration and getting one’s ducks in a row, not for settling down. In the immortal words of Jay-Z, “Thirty’s the new twenty.”

Indeed, the median age-at-first marriage has climbed to nearly 30 for today’s young adults, up from about 22 in 1970. Of course, there’s an upside to that. As my coauthors and I report in Knot Yet: the Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America, women who put off marriage and starting a family earn markedly more money than their peers who marry earlier.

But if you’d like to maximize your marital happiness, your odds of having a couple of kids, and of forging common memories and family traditions, you might not want to delay marriage if the right person presents his or herself in your mid-to-late 20s. A University of Texas study found the highest-quality unions were forged by couples who married during that period.

He then goes over some of the benefits.

Here’s one that stuck out to me:

First, you are more likely to marry someone who shares your basic values and life experiences, and less likely to marry someone with a complicated romantic or family history. Those who marry in their twenties, for instance, are more likely to marry someone who isn’t previously married and shares their level of educational attainment as well as their religious faith. Marrying at this stage in your life also allows couples to experience early adulthood together. In the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, a 31-year-old woman who married in her mid-twenties, “My husband and I got to grow up together—not apart. We learned sacrifice, selflessness, compromise, and became better people for it.”

And:

Women who marry in their 20s generally have an easier time getting pregnant, and having more than one child, than their peers who wait to marry in their thirties. You’ll also be around to enjoy the grandchildren for longer.

Marrying earlier is also nice because you get that “honeymoon” period before you have to start having kids. If you want to have 1-2 kids, you’ll need 3-4 years. You will want to have at least 2 years of “honeymoon” time to iron out differences and just enjoy married life. Children are challenging, and they will add more stress to the marriage. You don’t want to marry at 33 and start having kids before that 2 year settling-down period is finished. If marriage really is valuable, then it doesn’t make sense to put off building it together. The sooner your start, the more you can build. The more you can learn from each other. The more kids you can have.

Related to this study is a 15-minute TED.com lecture that talks about how people should be preparing for their marriages during their 20s instead of pursuing fun and thrills. (H/T Lindsay)

The transcript says this:

Okay, now that sounds a little flip, but make no mistake,the stakes are very high.When a lot has been pushed to your 30s,there is enormous thirtysomething pressureto jump-start a career, pick a city, partner up,and have two or three kids in a much shorter period of time.Many of these things are incompatible,and as research is just starting to show,simply harder and more stressful to do all at once in our 30s.

The post-millennial midlife crisis isn’t buying a red sports car.It’s realizing you can’t have that career you now want.It’s realizing you can’t have that child you now want,or you can’t give your child a sibling.Too many thirtysomethings and fortysomethingslook at themselves, and at me, sitting across the room,and say about their 20s,“What was I doing? What was I thinking?”

[…]Here’s a story about how that can go.It’s a story about a woman named Emma.At 25, Emma came to my officebecause she was, in her words, having an identity crisis.She said she thought she might like to work in art or entertainment,but she hadn’t decided yet,so she’d spent the last few years waiting tables instead.Because it was cheaper, she lived with a boyfriendwho displayed his temper more than his ambition.

[…]First, I told Emma to forget about having an identity crisisand get some identity capital.By “get identity capital,”I mean do something that adds value to who you are.Do something that’s an investmentin who you might want to be next.I didn’t know the future of Emma’s career,and no one knows the future of work,but I do know this:Identity capital begets identity capital.So now is the time for that cross-country job,that internship, that startup you want to try.I’m not discounting twentysomething exploration here,but I am discounting exploration that’s not supposed to count,which, by the way, is not exploration.That’s procrastination.I told Emma to explore work and make it count.

I think that’s good advice. Have the goal of getting married through high school and college and the early working years. Do hard things to prepare yourself to for the hard work that marriage requires. The reason why so many people are divorcing is because they are trying to pursue happiness through their 20s, then jumping off into marriage after their lives have been wrecked by drinking, promiscuity, debts, self-centeredness and painful break-ups. That’s completely the wrong way to go about getting married.

Usually, when I meet a person who has not achieved as much as he/she wants to have done, I try to encourage the person to study hard things. Update their resume. Apply for better jobs. Start saving more money. Try to serve others. Take on more responsibilities, even if they are not fun. Usually, people understand why I am asking them to do hard things. Because the only way to develop “identity capital” is by saying “NO” to the desire for happiness, and “YES” to doing hard things. No, you can’t study philosophy. Yes, you have to study computer science. No you can’t work as a waitress. Yes, you have to apply for an office job. No, you can’t delay paying off your debts. Yes, you have to start investing $100 a month.

Structure and boundaries seem difficult to young people – like they are going to lose their ability to have fun. But in the long run, building something worthwhile is more important than short-term fun and thrills.

Hi, I’m Lindsay. To tell you a little about me, I am a Christian, a wife, a mother of two girls, a homeschool graduate, a future homeschooling mom, a young-earth creationist, and a biologist. I started blogging in order to post my thoughts on a variety of worldview topics. These include such things as inalienable rights, conservatism, marriage and family, creation/evolution, abortion, Biblical apologetics, and Bible study. I also post recipes from time to time.

She has a Masters degree in biology and used to teach biology before becoming a stay-at-home homeschooling mother.

Here is her post on feminism. I count many problems with feminism in her post, but I just want to focus on a couple and urge you to click through to read the rest.

First the intro:

In some of my past posts (see here and here), I have pointed out some of the problems with feminism in passing. I keep getting comments that I’m wrong about feminism and that it’s just about equality and rights for women. However, I think many of those who call themselves feminists don’t realize what the movement has become. They haven’t kept up with the times.

Feminism may have started out as a movement to secure equal rights for women, but it has gone far beyond that today. People wanted to keep the movement going, even though equality has already been achieved, so they had to invent new horrors to rally people around their cause.

Thus, modern feminism does indeed see mothers being at home with their children as archaic, patriarchal, and oppressive. They elevate women in the workforce as being “strong women” while pointedly never referring to stay at home moms as such. They subtly (or not-so-subtly) tell women that stay home that they’re weaker or being controlled in some way.

Feminists have a negative view of sex, which leads to sex-withholding:

In the realm of sex, some of the more radical feminist leaders view any and all sex with a man as rape. Yes, they have actually said that. Even short of that, the very idea that a man must beg and cajole his wife for sex and she has all the power to say yes or no – widely passed off as normal in media of all kinds and praised as “equality” by feminists – is completely emasculating and degrading to men.

I think today a lot of women use premarital sex as a way of getting what they want – usually acceptance and attention. But if they marry, and no longer have to worry about “earning” the acceptance and attention, the sex stops. I think Lindsay is right to link to feminism.

One more:

Even worse, feminists are now framing the “equality” debate in terms of access to abortion. They speak of abortion as a “women’s rights issue” and tell us that those who oppose abortion want to keep women in subjection. Apparently, they think women cannot be equal to men unless they can kill their children in the womb and thus avoid the uniquely female consequences of sex.

There’s no question that feminism is wedded to the idea that in order for a woman to be able to do the same things that a man does, she needs to be able to terminate her unborn children.

Last one:

What’s more, feminists of today love to point out the many duties of men (such as getting a job) while denying that women have any duties. They pretend that a woman’s greater empathy and emotional bent is an unqualified good that men are simply deficient in (while saying that men are better than women at anything is widely considered taboo). They insinuate (if not outright say) that women are more spiritual and more naturally good, and so on. It’s everywhere. Our society is full of mostly subtle, and sometimes blatant, knocks against men while elevating women. Today’s feminists not only praise this as an accomplishment, but are pushing for more.

This one is important because so many Christians believe that the solution to every problem is for men to “man up” and enter into relationships with self-centered women because the women desire them to. But the ability of a man to engage in a long-term project like marriage-parenting is negatively affected by preferential treatment for women in the schools and in the workplace. The harder it is for him to do well in school and in the workplace, the less comfortable he feels about making a commitment to marrry and have children. Also, who wants to marry a woman who has been taught to be self-centered? Most men won’t want marriage, if that’s what marriage is. Men have needs, too.

Click through and read the whole thing. I’m sure you’ll find out something you didn’t know about feminism as it is today.

This article from the leftist Washington Post explains what young men should be looking for if they want to do well in the workplace.

Excerpt:

A new paper published recently in the journal Psychological Science found a link between an individual’s career improvement and the conscientiousness of his or her spouse.

The research examined the careers and personalities of more than 4,500 married people, using a common personality test known as the Big Five. The test measures people on five different traits: extraversion (how outgoing and sociable a person is), agreeableness (how honest and sympathetic someone is, versus suspicious and unfriendly), conscientiousness (how well someone can plan and be productive, rather than be disorganized and impulsive), neuroticism (how anxiety-prone someone is) and openness (how naturally curious and open to change a person is).

The researchers found that only one of the five traits — conscientiousness — could be linked to a partner’s career success, as measured by job satisfaction, income and promotions. “Even though your spouse doesn’t come to work with you day in and day out, their personality contributes to your job success,” says Joshua Jackson, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

[…][W]hen it came to the effect of a spouse‘s personality traits on a person’s career, only high scores on conscientiousness had any impact, whether positive or negative. Jackson suggests two main reasons for this: One, he says, is that people often emulate their spouses’ behavior, meaning a husband’s or wife’s industriousness and organizational skills might rub off on the other.

The second reason is that when a person’s spouse is organized, efficient and hard working, they’re probably tackling the bulk of the household chores, freeing their husband or wife up to focus more on his or her job. “You’re not as stressed about certain chores or duties that need to be done while you’re at work,” Jackson says.

Now if the person you want to marry doesn’t already have this skill, or hasn’t exercised it so far in life, then that getting him or her to put it in practice should be part of the courting process – at least if you intend to be effective yourself. Don’t be looking for someone fun who makes you feel good – look for someone organized and disciplined who can get things done and deliver results.

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This post is a 3 in one: one lecture, one question and answer, and another lecture – all on different topics.

First, I’ve got a lecture from the Reasonable Faith web site.

Dr. William Lane Craig is the top living Christian apologist and debater in the world today, and has 2 Masters degrees and 2 Ph.Ds. He also has scores of academic publications including books from Oxford University Press, etc.

Advice for women: understand that you have to work at the marriage in order to help your man finish his studies

Advice: set aside a period of the day for communicating and bonding with your spouse

Advice: cultivate the ability to talk with your spouse on a personal level, and maintain eye contact

Advice for men: do not break eye contact with your wife, and also hold her hand when communicating

Advice: do not be embarrassed to seek out a marriage counselor, but make it a good counselor

Advice: don’t just be doing stuff for your mate, but also be vulnerable and transparent with your mate

How your relationship with your wife helps you with your relationship with God

How do you handle the rebellion of children without being overbearing and authoritarian?

There is a period of Q&A at the end. There is another piece of advice that comes out in the Q&A for women: take an interest in your spouse’s work even if you don’t care about it, and ask him about it every day and try to understand it. Go to the man’s workplace and see what he does. Go to his presentations. Get involved in the man’s ministry and help him in practical ways. Another piece of advice is to not paper over the differences – it’s good to argue, because it means that problems are being confronted and worked through. Husbands should have a good male friend to talk to, and wives should have a good female friend to talk to.

I like how Dr. Craig has thought about how to have a successful marriage, how to choose the right woman, and how to love his wife. I like how he calls out men on the chastity thing. I think that chastity is more important for men than for women, because it’s the men who take the lead in choosing and pursuing the right woman for their plan.

Secondly, here is my previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for married couples, where he gives 5 points of advice for married couples.

Here are the main pieces of advice Dr. Craig gives:

Resolve that there will be no divorce

Delay having children

Confront problems honestly

Seek marital counseling

Take steps to build intimacy in your relationship

And here’s the controversial one (#2):

2. Delay having children. The first years of marriage are difficult enough on their own without introducing the complication of children. Once children come, the wife’s attention is necessarily diverted, and huge stresses come upon you both. Spend the first several years of marriage getting to know each other, working through your issues, having fun together, and enjoying that intimate love relationship between just the two of you. Jan and I waited ten years before having our first child Charity, which allowed me the finish graduate school, get our feet on the ground financially, establish some roots, and enjoy and build our love relationship until we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood. The qualifier here is that if the wife desperately wants children now, then the husband should accede to her wish to become a mother, rather than withhold that from her. Her verdict should be decisive. But if you both can agree to wait, things will probably be much easier.

Third and finally, here is a previous post on Dr. Craig’s advice for choosing a good spouse, with illustrations from his own marriage.

For example, Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:

And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”

And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.

If you want to hear another Christian husband talk about how his wife supports him, listen to this lecture called “Giants in the Land” with Dr. Walter Bradley. It’s actually my favorite lecture. I also really like his testimony lecture. If you’re looking for guidance, these are some of the people I would recommend.

The post starts explaining how a woman supports a man in his role as spiritual leader of the home. I always talk about the responsibilities of a husband/father in the home being protecting, providing and leading on moral and spiritual issues. You’d be surprised how many Christian women are not OK with me claiming these roles. In fact, I am always getting criticism for buying too many gifts (providing), for being too concerned about the challenges of policies (protecting), and for being too rough on rebutting spiritual wolves – even after they admit they are wrong! (spiritual/moral leading). It is rare for me to find a Christian woman who accepts those male roles. Usually, I get attacked for all three of them. Women do not like to let me execute these tasks.

Lindsay is in good shape on all 3 of those roles, but this is the part of her post that I really liked:

Once children arrive, it becomes pretty much impossible for her to work outside the home and still fulfill her duties at home. The funny thing about children is that they need constant care. One cannot care for children and work outside the home too. The choice once children come along is whether to outsource the care of the children to someone else or to do it yourself. I firmly believe that God entrusts children to a husband and wife because he wants them to be the primary influences in their children’s lives. That doesn’t happen if the children spend a majority of their waking hours in the care of someone else.

Children don’t just need food and shelter provided to them, they need love, teaching, discipline, a sense of security, and examples of how they are to live. All of those things are best done when the child spends time primarily with his or her parents. Daycare workers, school teachers, and even grandparents simply cannot provide them in the same way parents can. No one loves a child like his own parents do. No one has such a vested interest in ensuring that he grows up with the proper spiritual and moral training. Even if others care about the child, the responsibility for the training of a child belongs to his parents. Daycare workers and teachers and grandparents won’t answer to God for the soul of that child. His parents will.

So, given the needs of children, I am convinced that women are called to be with their children, training and caring for them as their primary caregiver. Does that mean a mother can’t have any job outside the home? In theory, no. In practice, yes. A woman’s priority must be her own family. If she can have her children with her or leave them for only a short time each day, she may still be able to provide the necessary training and care they need from their mother and earn some income. But in doing that, she needs to be sure she is not neglecting her husband’s needs either. Theoretically, a woman can have it all – keeping a job and caring for her family too. The problem is that it is a very rare woman who has the energy to keep up with the constant needs of her children for care, training, discipline, and love and those of her husband for companionship, sex, and a partner in life as well as the logistics of running a household and still have something left for even a part-time job.

What usually happens when a woman has an outside job is that her family simply suffers the lack. Either her children spend a lot of time with other caregivers or teachers or her husband does without the companionship and marital intimacy he needs or some of the household chores descend on the husband, taking away some of his time and energy to train his children spiritually and impact the world for Christ. Often it’s a combination of these. A woman simply cannot meet all the needs of her family when she is spread that thin and, as a result, something important gets left undone.

I wish I could find women who had definite ideas about what they wanted to do with their children, but thinking back over previous relationships, what I usually here is that they want to go on mission trips, do pro-life protests, have careers, etc. No one looks at these little kids with any sort of plan to grow them into anything. I just think it’s depressing that kids are not part of most women’s plans. If there is any plan at all it’s that there should be no plan, and the kids can just do anything they want. How depressing for the man to think about when he has to pay all the bills to raise kids who are aiming at nothing, and will surely hit it. What kind of man is excited about having children when his wife is not on board with making them into anything special? It’s depressing.